Columnist for The Age

THE English magazine The Spectator is politically conservative and has been so from since before the city of Melbourne came into being, but its book reviews show the conservative tradition at its best - well informed, sharp in their word use, unforgiving of cant but capable of emotion, even tenderness, where it is merited.

I recently came across a review in The Spectator of Christopher Hitchens' last book, Mortality, by Cressida Connolly, daughter of writer Cyril Connolly. As a review, it is up to the magazine's best standards, being perceptive and wise, but it was the photograph that accompanied it that took my attention.

It is a portrait of Hitchens knowing that death is upon him. The name of the photographer is not given, which is a pity because it is a magnificent portrait of the proud, unrepentant atheist.

He doesn't like death. He resents it bitterly as only someone with an ego as big as his could, but the face is not fearful. Part of the affection which attached to Hitchens at the time of his death came from the manner in which he faced it. He was to the end his own man and that can only be respected.

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The detail I recall from the many stories written about him after his death came from novelist Ian McEwan, who sat with him during his final days and watched as Hitchens lapsed in and out of consciousness, returning to a book review he was writing during such moments of lucidity as came to him. In the end, we all have to face what Buddhists call ''the void''. I am not sure when my time comes that writing a book review will seem like a suitably meaningful pastime but for Hitchens, as he said, writing was literally his life.

Hitchens lived with gusto - a word prized by William Hazlitt, the great English journalist of the late 18th century. Hitchens also wrote with gusto. His prose never tired. Cressida Connolly includes in her review a wanly humorous passage from Mortality where he describes his transition, once his cancer was diagnosed, ''from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady … The new land is quite welcoming in its way. Everybody smiles encouragingly.'' Connolly continues: ''He soon finds that 'the country has a language of its own', a language he dislikes for its dullness and difficulty.''

And yet, when Hitchens died last December, and newspapers around the English-speaking world carried articles about him and posts from readers saying how much he had influenced them, I realised he hadn't influenced me at all.

I understood his appeal as a media performer. He had an intellectual arsenal that he deployed with unfaltering eloquence. And if anyone doubts that his views proceeded from a place of deep conviction, they should watch his excoriation of the Reverend Jerry Falwell in the aftermath of Falwell's death, a verbal blast that tore asunder the cosy sentimentality of the American television show on which he was appearing.

But in the end what distanced me from Hitchens was his certainty. How can you be an authority on so many happenings in so many different parts of the world? It was as if, having removed God from the cosmic equation, he shouldered the burden of omniscience.

I once read an interview where Hitchens was asked what is the best thing that could happen to a person. ''To be proved right in your own lifetime,'' he replied. But time is the only true test, isn't it? It would be interesting to know how right, or indeed how relevant, Hitchens will appear in 20 years, 50 years, a century …

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